


Hang On To The Thought Of Me

by Squash (JeSuisGourde)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, mentions of Owen Harper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 01:57:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14802165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeSuisGourde/pseuds/Squash
Summary: Ianto informs Maggie Hopley of Owen's death.





	Hang On To The Thought Of Me

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about my Owen Harper obsession. It's just, he's my favorite character on the show and there's not enough fics portraying him in a positive light, and I want so badly to remedy that.  
> To jog your memory, if you need it, Maggie Hopley is the woman Owen met on the roof in A Day In The Death.

Jack is still walking around in a daze, wandering through the hub like a stranger, and Gwen either spends her time in the hub with tears snaking silently down her face, or disappears for hours to take out her grief on weevils, so it falls to Ianto to notify all the important families and friends of Tosh and Owen's deaths.

It doesn't matter that he hasn't slept in four days, living on coffee and erratic emotion and all the little things that need attention in order to repair the city and restore normality to the world outside of the hub.

Normally, the archives would be comforting, the old antique desk with scuffs and ink stains of archivists long past, the lukewarm smell of dust and old books, the comfortable yet varied repetition of filing. But he's down here to print out files he never wanted to have to deal with. And it only makes it more obvious that when he goes back upstairs, he'll be met with two silences where his friends used to be.

Each member of Torchwood, upon joining, is asked to compile a list of friends, family, or individuals to be notified in the case of their death. They're meant to keep it updated throughout their employment, but that enforcement is self-regulated, and in Ianto's experience, some keep it up to date, and some don't. Tosh has made it easy for him; each entry is dated and annotated with any supplementary details. Ianto can't hold back a smile when he sees that she's even included the fact that her uncle has a Newfoundland dog that will slobber all over visitors if he is notifying family in person.

Owen, to no surprise, has not kept up with the list. His mother is listed, with an aside in Owen's brusque manner: _Email or call. She's not going to give a shit. Don't give her my money._ Below that is a phone number that no longer belongs to the name listed. But Ianto knows there should be more on the list.

So he's a snoop, but Owen never gave a shit about digging through other people's things. And it's Ianto's job, anyway. And Owen's not here to yell at him and threaten him and call him names and then sigh loudly and stand behind him, shifting from foot to foot as he waits for Ianto to finish. The mental image is almost too much. But Owen's phone is easy to crack when you know him, and so is his laptop, and soon he's compiled a small list of people to talk to. Still so much smaller than Toshiko's, but Ianto knows well how Torchwood's tiny, insular world becomes everything when you've got nothing else left to hold you up.

Ianto prints the two lists for his files and places them on the blotter on his desk, ready to be annotated and filed away.

“Where are you going?” Gwen asks as he tucks a copy of the lists in a folder and straightens his tie. Her eyes are red and her lashes are stuck together in clumps, but her cheeks are dry.

“I need to notify Owen's friends and family of his death.”

“But he had no one on the list,” Gwen points out, shaking her head as if remorseful of the fact that Owen was never able to leave the gravitational pull of the Hub. “You already emailed his mother, didn't you?”

“I did. She hasn't responded. Owen didn't like paperwork,” And here, Ianto is careful to use the past tense. He always forgets how hard that is to get used to. “But I did some digging. There are a few other people who should probably be notified.”

Ianto sits in the carpark without turning his car on, staring at the damp brick wall in front of him, and breathes deeply, clenching the wheel to try and stop the trembling in his hands. Notifying strangers of victims' deaths is easy; he never knows much about the deceased, has no connection to them aside from the circumstances of their death. He was even distant enough from Suzie that making his way through her list had not been very hard. But he and Owen had grown to be friends, in their own way, had gotten drunk together, had been through hell and back together in more ways than one.

Maggie Hopley lives not too far from Ianto's own flat in Radyr, and passing by his street, it feels for a moment like he's about to give himself notice of Owen's death. _Excuse me, Mr. Jones, I have some rather difficult news. Your coworker Doctor Owen Harper died not a week ago. Thought I'd let you know, as the hub's been empty for days and I don't think you've let it sink in yet._ He shoves the thought away and tells himself that once all the formalities are over, maybe then he can let himself grieve.

Standing on Maggie's doorstep, Ianto tries to school his features into something acceptable. Normally, that means looking overly sympathetic and sorrowful towards the families of victims and strangers. This time, he knows he looks probably too haggard and hurting, the ache of loss and lack of sleep marring his features; reining it in is harder than he expects, and when Maggie opens the door, he's not sure if he's managed it fully.

“Um, who are you?” She frowns at him.

Ianto shifts, suddenly almost nervous. “A coworker of Owen Harper's. I'm afraid I've got some difficult news.”

And he can see in her face that she knows as soon as he's said it, but she lets him in and makes tea for both of them. At the kitchen table, she wraps her hands around her mug and stares at him, a sort of defiant confusion in her big blue eyes.

“I don't understand? He was already dead. I thought you can't die twice? Can you?”

Ianto chews his lips for a moment before answering her question; the last few days hold so many layers of grief it's hard for him to find his way through. But he takes a breath and sits up straight.

“All those bombings that happened around the city last week? It wasn't a terrorist, at least, not like the news said. It was someone we were trying to stop. One of the explosions happened at the nuclear plant, and Owen went there to stop the meltdown. It was contained, but he was in the emergency containment room when the lockdown was triggered.” Ianto looks down at his hands, red and swollen where he's been biting at the nails and picking at his skinned knuckles. “He was trapped inside.”

There's a horrified, aching silence as Maggie processes the information. Maybe she's imagining it in her head, like Ianto's done at least a hundred times by now.

“Shit,” she breathes. Ianto can relate.

“I'm sorry. I just figured you'd want to know.” Ianto shrugs, at a loss for words, and takes a drink instead. It's rare that he doesn't know what to say, but he's numb, like a stunned creature in a trap, staring dumbly at its wounded limb.

“I did— I do. I— What happens now?”

Ianto blinks. “What do you mean?”

“Will there be a funeral? A memorial? Anything?”

The _normality_ of the question catches Ianto by surprise. He's been so focused on just finishing up protocol formalities, he hasn't even thought about what normal people do to grieve. Torchwood doesn't do funerals. They barely do coping. Ianto can't remember anything even resembling a memorial for anyone he or the rest of the team had known in any capacity. The first few weeks after getting back from his enforced leave, Ianto had morbidly placed a single rose next to the incinerator every Monday. He knows Tosh had worn Tommy's coat for a while. And Owen's fiance had gotten a funeral but Owen hadn't been there to attend; he'd stayed at home in an empty bed. Katie's memorial had been the ocean of alcohol Owen had begun to try and drown himself in once he got to Torchwood.

“Oh. Well, you see—”

“Do other people know about him?” Maggie asks, taking one hand off her cup of tea to tuck her hair back behind her ear. “Do other people know that he saved them? That you all saved the world? Do they know who he was?”

Ianto doesn't know the conversation Owen had with Maggie, can't know, now. He never asked. That night, Owen had managed to unravel himself entirely and then weave himself back together before Ianto ever saw his face. And when he told Ianto what happened on the rooftop, he hadn't questioned him. Never questioned when Owen had him look into therapists specializing in grief, though he knew what he was doing. He always figured the ache of empathy was in Owen's blood, the drive to help overriding everything. Gwen always wanted to be the bleeding heart of Torchwood, and yet it was Owen that always made helping people so much more hands-on and personal. Even when he hated it, even when he wanted people to think he was a spiky bastard, Owen had _cared_.

“Owen didn't have many friends—” Ianto begins, then starts over. “Torchwood doesn't really—” He sighs and shuts his eyes. “With what we do, most people don't know who we are or that we really exist. Even the people we save, we have to give amnesia pills to, so they don't end up traumatized. Technically, Earth isn't supposed to know aliens exist yet. What I mean is, very few civilians actually know what we do, much less who any of us actually are. We don't really hold funerals or memorials or anything of that sort.”

“But that's not fair!” She's half-risen from her seat, gesturing indignantly with one hand. “How many lives has Owen saved? How many times has Cardiff stayed standing because of him? I wasn't even being attacked by any sort of alien _thing_ , he just saw me and came to help. How many people has he just helped without being asked? He even found me afterward and made sure I had someone to talk to, made sure I was okay. Most people wouldn't stop and help a stranger, much less check up on them after. He deserves _something_ , at least. He never said anything about a family, but _someone's_ got to remember him. He deserves it, he saved so many people and they don't even know it.”

“There are files on every single Torchwood agent in our archives. His memory is preserved there.” _Very professional,_ he can practically hear Owen's sarcastic snarl in his ear, _like a good little archivist_. Owen would have feigned indifference. Owen would have called him him a freak for protocol. Owen would have told him that death is inevitable, that it's going to happen, and they should all just get over it. Owen would have just shrugged and said there's nothing after death, anyway, so why should it matter? That _hurts_ , Ianto realizes.

“That's not what I meant,” Maggie corrects him. “I mean, real people. People like me, who don't work with him. Is there no one?”

“You're part of two very small, elite groups,” Ianto informs her, inclining his head. “People who have seen and remember Owen's compassionate side, and people who know what we do that are still alive.”

“So...what do you do? When someone dies?”

Ianto knows this part. It's his job. He ticks off the checklist in his head as he answers her.

“We write reports of the circumstances of the death. We store the body in our base and their possessions in storage. We notify family and friends, like I'm doing now. And then, we just....carry on.” He finishes lamely.

“Well, I'm sorry, but that's bullshit.” Maggie waves her hand in the air as if one gesture could encompass the floundering confusion of loss. “You can't just _carry on_ from the death of a coworker! You can't just _forget_ them!”

“Don't you think we know that?” Ianto snaps, forgetting himself. He pauses, closes his eyes, counts to ten. Tries to push away the feeling of helplessness. “I'm sorry. Look, in our line of work, we see death all the time. For us, it's inevitable. Not in the 'oh, we all die someday' eventuality that people like to spout. What I mean is, we all know that some day we are going to die because of this job, whether from an enemy or an accident or our own hand. We save lives, but we sacrifice ourselves. We all knew that, going in.”

Ianto thinks of the little things tucked into corners and under desks, on walls and in books, the remnants and remembrances of Torchwood members long passed. On a brass plaque beside a door in an office long since used for storage and paperwork overflow: _To the memory of Harriet, May she and God forgive_. Hanging in Jack's office among the knick-knacks and belongings of previous leaders, a small embroidered tapestry decorated with flowers and deer and the words _For Angharad, from the stars to the earth, but never forgotten_. Carved into a decorative paving stone under the only window in Torchwood's lower levels: _In remembrance of Doctor Charles Quinn: doctor, teacher, invaluable colleague. Even war cannot undo his efforts_. Scratched crudely into the stone wall, hidden behind the coffee machine, in Jack's own desperate hand, the names of Alex Hopkins and his team murdered by their leader's own hand.

He thinks of his own graffiti, carved into the edge of his desk in the archives like the margin notes of a medieval scribe: Tosh and Owen's names and dates, and the only words he had been able to think of: _They were my friends._

“We don't forget them, not really. If we grieved every death the way you're supposed to, we'd never be able to do our jobs. We'd never even be able to get out of bed. But we don't forget. Owen was like my brother. He was our doctor, he had our backs and he took care of us. We did love him. We still do. It's only been five days. He won't be fading yet.”

He sighs, coughing a little when his breath catches on sadness, and hides it with a few mouthfuls of tea. He's pretty sure his hands are still shaking. Maggie watches him with a sort of sad, fascinated look on her face.

“So you're all alone, like I was. Who's going to save all of you when you're on the roof, then?”

“No one, I'm afraid.” Ianto smiles ruefully. “As a rule, Torchwood is an exercise in grief and loneliness. We all learn to live with it. Owen, did, too.”

“That's bullshit. Look, I know I'm going to sound like a hypocrite, but that can't be healthy.”

Ianto is inclined to agree.

They both stare down at their mugs of tea. Ianto watches the skin of his thumb bend and stretch as he rubs the side of the cup. The sorrow and sleep deprivation are starting to get to him. He's not sure where to go from here. When Torchwood One fell, he never spoke to anyone about it because there were less than thirty survivors, and he was too busy caring for Lisa. Suzie's death was a sudden exposure of betrayal, and there was an unspoken agreement to forget. When Lisa died, he hardly spoke about it; the grief was all-consuming, and his coworkers were too busy resenting him for his own betrayal. He'd never managed to have a conversation with someone else about loss while grappling with the freshness of grief. Normally, he'd have gone by now, back to the hub to finish filing paperwork while the victim's family is left to grieve on their own.

But Maggie is waiting silently like she's expecting something from him, and truthfully, he's expecting something from himself as well.

“We can meet for coffee this weekend, and I can tell you about him, if you like.” He offers, feeling a little like he's drowning. “To remember him.”

“Okay,” Maggie agrees, though she still looks shocked. “I'd like that.”

“And, well, there is no body, so he's not buried anywhere, but the tower on Roald Dahl Plass is close enough to our base if you want to place anything.”

“Thank you, Ianto.” She gives him a small smile that drifts away. “I'm sorry that you have to lose him again. I really am.”

“Thank you.” It's strange, being comforted by someone he'd intended to be comforting. His eyes feel scratchy and swollen with exhaustion and grief. Maybe he really does look as fragile and strange as he feels. His tea is down to the stained bottom and the dregs around the edges of the mug. It's time to leave.

And driving back to the hub, Ianto presses a fist to one eye and screws up his face to see through the sudden tears. He almost regrets offering to talk to Maggie about Owen. It feels like he's about to share something that's always been his alone, like he's giving up a private piece of him that he only now has realized he wants to cling to. But she's right, Owen deserves memory, something more than a file in the dark. And as wishful as Ianto's thinking can sometimes get, he's pragmatic enough to know that he probably won't last much longer than Owen and Tosh. His memories of Owen are precious, but maybe they'll remain if he shares them, puts them in a transparent box and lets someone who's not playing such a tenuous balancing act with life see them.

And while Owen is frozen forever in the files tucked away in Ianto's archives, in the names carved into the wooden desk in the dark, in the photos taped to Gwen's workstation and tucked in the back of the tourist centre's cash register, maybe he'll stay alive and moving just a little longer in the mind of someone else he saved, someone not as doomed as his coworkers.

If he shares Owen, maybe his time in the earth's memory will hold out just a little longer.

 


End file.
